Garfield freshman, 15, boosting newspapers, civic literacy | The Free Press Initiative

Those who think the younger generation will never read newspapers should meet Rafael Brewer.

A freshman at Seattle’s Garfield High School, Brewer took it upon himself to produce a weekly news quiz that’s now distributed to all of the school’s roughly 1,650 students.

Around 100 students a week participate in the contest, which they can do on connected devices or a PC in the library.

That’s a pretty good response rate, especially for something that only started in January as a way to get students to read newspapers.

While this is a small and unique project, the effort and creativity are inspiring, especially amid the news industry’s gloomy business situation.

Brewer and his partners in the project, Garfield librarian Tyson Manzin and volunteer tutor Kim Gould, are now trying to figure out ways to increase participation and make the quiz available to high schools across the city.

“I had a vague idea of wanting to do something to engage the student body in news,” Brewer, 15, said during an interview in the library. “We kind of brainstormed and the news quiz was the result of all that thinking. It really was a joint effort between the three of us.”

They began working on the quiz last fall and sent the first one out in January, through presentations given during students’ advisory class period. Now it’s emailed directly to students by Manzin.

“We got about 60 submissions in the first week, which I was incredibly impressed by,” Manzin said.

He’s talking to other librarians about extending the quiz to their schools, and to other Garfield teachers about ways to sustain the program after Brewer moves on.

Perhaps this grassroots work is how to build appreciation for local newspapers in a school district like Seattle’s, which is important since it’s preparing students to be informed citizens who will start voting in local elections after graduating.

Yet only six of Seattle’s 18 regular and alternative public high schools now have standalone newspaper classes. They’re among nine that have journalism classes.

Several Seattle middle schools also have newspapers although their future is precarious.

I recently heard from a student at Jane Addams Middle School circulating a petition that received more than 250 signatures to save its 10-year-old paper, The Paw Print, from budget cuts this year. The principal and journalism teacher didn’t respond to my inquiries.

Meanwhile, Brewer is spending three to four hours a week producing and managing the quiz at Garfield.

Gould covers the weekly prize, a $10 gift certificate for Ezell’s Famous Chicken restaurant across the street. All participants receive a Bulldog Buck to spend at the school.

A retired engineer and aerospace consultant who graduated from Garfield, Gould for years has provided the school with The Seattle Times and The New York Times, plus an assortment of local weeklies. They are displayed on a library table alongside The Messenger, Garfield’s student paper.

Gould said his goal was “not only getting kids to pay attention to current affairs and news, but also I’m a big print fan and I was thinking maybe, if they get exposed to print, they’ll develop a love for it.”

This is also a way to help prepare students for the flood of fake news online.

This grew out of Gould’s effort to get more students to read newspapers.

This is also a way to help prepare students for the flood of fake news online.

Gould’s thinking at Garfield is, “Hey, whatever you’ve got on your phone could be real news, it may not be, but this physical thing here, with this brand on it — New York Times, Seattle Times, et cetera — has journalists behind it with journalistic integrity,” he said. “And no, it’s not perfect but it’s as close as you can get to perfection in our system.”

Gould’s family foundation has also supported The Seattle Times Investigative Journalism Fund.

Brewer reads newspapers at school and the Sunday Seattle Times his family gets at home. He believes more students should read papers, and he prefers the print edition.

“At the beginning of the year I heard the newspaper was a resource available to us and I thought it would be cool to look at and explore and read,” he said. “And I guess I like how in print it’s a lot more curated, less advertising, easier to read, you’ve got to skim columns. I guess I just like the format better.”

He’s not an anomaly. Columbia Journalism Review last month published a story about a resurgence of interest among high schoolers in print newspapers. The headline: “How print got cool again.”

Whether there’s enough of these burgeoning newspaper readers, and enough willing to subscribe when they build careers and households, is a multibillion-dollar question for an industry facing an uncertain future.

With less ad revenue and higher costs to publish, dailies are increasingly cutting print frequency and some are becoming digital-only.

There’s no clear answer for what’s the right strategy. But I think building appreciation for local news in schools is critical to both the industry and civic literacy.

At stake is not just the 6,000 remaining newspapers in the U.S. but the voter engagement, community knowledge and accountability that fade when local papers disappear.

Seattle is an oasis amid America’s spreading news desert and people like Brewer, Gould and Manzin are planting seeds to keep it alive.

This is excerpted from the free, weekly Voices for a Free Press newsletter. Sign up to receive it at the Save the Free Press website, st.news/SavetheFreePress. Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley is the editor of the Free Press Initiative, which aims to inform the public about issues facing newspapers, local news coverage, and a free press. You can learn more about the Free Press Initiative, or sign up for a newsletter, at company.seattletimes.com/save-the-free-press/.